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Monthly Archives: April 2010

Below are my notes/keystrokes from the Developing the Paperless Habit session at the ABA’s Techshow. The session was my absolute favorite, with Nerino Petro and Ernie Svenson helping attorneys understand that you can get paperless (if not paper free):

1. You’re leaving a world your familiar with. We know paper. The world of paperless has more options.

2. Psychology involved with going from paper to digital.

3. Key factor in successful transition from paper to digital is training. Can’t stress it enough.

4. As people become more familiar with the process they will accept it more readily.

5. Don’t throw your staff into the deep end of the pool or they will drown.

6. The more people in the office to get digital, the more training you need.

7. Ask yourself: At end of road, where do I want to be?

8. Goal should be to keep your system as simple as possible. Your data accessible from anywhere. The whole point is to be able to access your information from anywhere.

9. Of course, you need to back up all of your information so it is preserved.

10. Back up and sync is the best. So one computer dies its no problem, just use another.

11. When information is digitized, natural disasters like Katrina are not as devastating.

12. Approach: you can make things as complicated as you can. Will it work. Yes. Will it be adopted by your staff? Probably not.

13. Keep digital things digital – if they are already in digital format, keep them that way.

14. Don’t spend the money to print out emails and other digital documents.

1. What is the cloud? Moving the application from the machine that you have on your desk/office to someone else’s server.
2. What are the benefits of cloud computing? The cloud is evolving. Cloud is kept up to date re: security and upgrades so better service offering.
3. Overall lower cost because you don’t have to buy all the equipment to run the infrastructure
4. Greater scalability as your firm grows/shrinks no license issues. There are definitely more predictable cost. There is generally a monthly charge.
5. While the up front cost may be lower, you may not be able to scale down.
6. Most work through your browser.
7. Not less IT staff – it just shifts. Smaller firms will need to hire IT staff because cloud computing has lots of knotty problems.
8. There is a fragmentation.
9. www.gethuman.com will get you numbers for live help.
10. Cloud vendors contracts are one sided, don’t promise update and most don’t deliver high up time. Most go down.
11. You will be more on the cloud next year.
12. Drawbacks are bandwidth can get expensive. Internet kinda works like a hose. You need to get a certain flow for it work.
13. Cloud requires more and more of that flow from your firm to the cloud and that can get expensive.
14. Interconnection with other systems is much harder than traditional software.
15. Cloud is a series of different paths that don’t necessarily converge.
16. Complexity different in not greater than managing in house data.
17. What are the ethical concerns? Law has not caught up with technology.
18. No standards yet for cloud. Not around long enough.
19. No general understanding of how things go together into the cloud.
20. Where is your data? Ethics are hard.
21. Privacy laws affect you if your cloud provider is outside the US.
22. Amazon will not tell you where your data is.
23. Cloud is moving way ahead of the ethics curve.
24. Impact of Internet technology on the delivery of legal services, both globally and within the US ABA Ethics 20/20 Commission.
25. How can I ethically store client files on the internet? According to State Bar of Arizona: tinyurl.com/yg4hoxg
26. “The client files would be accessible only through a SSL server, which encodes documents making it difficult for third parties to intercept or read them”.
27. “The lawyer would assign unique randomly generated alpha numeric names.”
28. Arizona went on to say that it is also important that lawyers recognize their own competence limitations regarding security measures and take the necessary time and energy to become competent or alternatively consult available experts.
29. If you’re on the cloud, you’re in every jurisdiction how do you not trip up of unauthorized practice of law?
30. Do you need to obtain permissions from different bar associations?
31. Dual layer website – so first section is informational only. Only those who are clients, or necessary step to reach out to you so that you can evaluate as to whether or not you’ll take on that client get access to the second layer of your website.
32. Conflicts can arise as your talking to lots of people on the web. Be aware that there is the danger of advising both parties.
33. Good client intake/screening process.
34. Privacy legislation. Regulate the collection, creation, duration and retention of information including cookies, IP addresses and other personal information.
35. Is a client entitled to know how long something is retained. How do they opt out?
36. What happens if privacy is breached – based on your jurisdiction.
37. Ethics rules photographs, video clips, LLP notifications, client endorsements, areas of specialty or particular claimed expertise, any expectation as to the future results, lawyer rates – all regulated.
38. How do you find out the rules in your jurisdiction. Start with your State Bar website. Google “legal ethics” and there are blogs and real live books.
39. There are other statues regarding privacy depending on the type of information you are collecting from your clients.
40. Carefully read the contract for the cloud services. Some don’t guarantee privacy for the information you are storing. If you have regulations like HIPAA, you really do need to read the TOS to make sure you are taking reasonable steps.
41. Copyright is an issue when putting information on the cloud.
42. Client identification rules are cropping up re: money laundering/fraud. Know thy client. Clients are not face to face.
43. Be careful when you contacted over the web – some are crooks. Law firms are the fastest growing industry for fraud.
44. Need a good disclaimer for your website.
45. Website should be crystal clear that there is no client/attorney agreement until there is something signed by the client. Instead of click through, better to have downloaded pdf they need to return.
46. What happens if the cloud provider goes out of business or changes their business.
47. Big issue – cloud will have your data and your applications – what happens if there is an outage?
48. When you buy software and install it, if vendor ran out of business, you can still run it. You can go to back ups if your data gets corrupt. With a cloud provider, you’re stuck with the cloud provider.
49. Data in transit; data at rest; data during computation – encryption. As lawyers we need to keep secrets so we need to take all three forms data can be in into consideration.
50. Data at rest encryption is easy; data in transit is easy to encrypt; data in computation encryption is not really possible to do today.
51. Cloud will be dominant. Will take over. Have never seen so much invested in cloud.
52. Know where your data is and try to keep it in the US. ? SO IMPORTANT!
53. Understand security risks if its your key data such as documents/email. Make sure they are duplicated somewhere else.
54. Pros: more predictable costs and makes IT a utility.
55. Although tons of risks, cloud will still be dominant.
56. Have key information with multiple vendors; have your software with different vendors.
57. Understand lack of integration; and ethical concerns.

21. Blogs help you produce, publish and redistribute information. Blogs help you with SEO, attract media.

22. If you don’t like to write – blogs may not be the social media tool for you. Blogging gets lots of exposure. You need to add content to make it valuable.

23. If you have passion for a topic; and a passion for writing – create a blog. If you don’t have passion or don’t like to write there are other ways to create content (or connect).

24. Nothing more sad than a blog that has three posts and then left at that.

25. Use on line sites to archive your documents and point your profiles to those documents (which are keyword rich).

26. If you like writing – blogging is a great way to showcase your practice.

27. Start with free site like blogger or WordPress. WordPress has two types of blogs – one you download and add to your site; the other just uses theirs.

28. You can transfer the information if you find you enjoy blogging and you want to upgrade to non-free service.

29. Don’t invest thousands in a blog only to find you don’t like it. Start with free.

30. Social media is a great way to showcase your area of practice. Social media levels the playing field. The more you interact, the higher your search engine results.

31. Starting out should have 3 or 4 posts per week. Draft posts in advance and then schedule them. (I recommend 2 posts per week.)

32. Intersperse current events and answers to questions you get frequently.

33. Once you have momentum, put up a thorough post once per week. If you can do more, do it.

34. To start, 3 or 4 times per week for the first 4 months – regularity is best. (Me: 2 per week)

35. Paid blog sites look nicer; for fee services may link you to other sites; perception

36. Free sites don’t back up your posts; whereas paid sites will.

37. Find someone to create the design but use WordPress from your own server.

38. Blog should focus on one or two areas; use words organically – the words that your clients are searching for you with.

39. If there’s no passion, your blog may appear flat.

40. Search engine optimization for blogs means focusing on one or two specific topics.

41. Clients search by their needs – so use those words.

42. Link to your website from your blog – so narrow focus but still let consumers know a bit more about you and link to your site.

43. Second life is not mainstream; but there are lawyers on it specializing in the virtual transactions that go on.

44. Go where other lawyers have not gone – you have an advantage.

45. Still lots of room on all the suggested directories and social media.

46. Social networking and professional networking are not mutually exclusive.

47. When you connect on line it allows you to form off line relationships.

48. Social media allows you create connections.

49. Social media allows you to be remarkable and stand out.

50. How much is too much? Blogs are passive so not push. Facebook Fan pages can overwhelm. Just like in real life – don’t be rude. Also if you’re on all the time, your clients and contacts will notice.